


With Every Heartbeat

by Chinchillas4fire



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Anna/Kristoff (Disney), No Smut, Post-Canon, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, but only as a plot point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28747827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chinchillas4fire/pseuds/Chinchillas4fire
Summary: Elsa lightly drew her fingers across her sister’s cheek, wiping her tears away. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart.” She graced a soft kiss into the red hair before her, but Anna was caught with another bout of crying.“I’m not going anywhere,” a placating kiss on the forehead.“I could never leave you,” a kiss on Anna’s salty cheeks.
Relationships: Anna/Elsa (Disney)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	With Every Heartbeat

Anna regarded herself in an heirloom mirror. Beyond glass that was held sternly by an engraved wooden vignette, she admired the thick, lavish lace of a white gown.

She regarded the newfound steadiness in her jawline, the regality in her posture, the curve of her waist and her back. She thought plainly about the accumulation of her years, and the gentle scars that persisted themselves on her heart. She tucked a lock of frozen blonde hair behind her ear, the warmth shocking her cold ears and reminding her of a familiar intimacy. She turned from her reflection, bashfully enacting some imagined scenario, and let out a well-considered sigh of enchantment. She rehearsed again with her reflection, this time taking longer to brush the hair behind her ear; Again, but with a smile as she sighed; Again, but more forlorn.

So absorbed in her playful caricature, Anna did not notice the admiration of another person in the dressing chamber. She hadn’t heard the door slide across the marble floors, nor the light, withheld rapport of regal footsteps, nor the fluttering heartbeat that accompanied those things. It was the woman’s voice that slipped her out of her delusion.

“I have a surprise for you, Anna.”

Anna looked up from her reflection and out of her fantasy to see the fully clad royal visage of her sister approaching. She was holding something behind her back.

Elsa paused, “Close your eyes, silly.” While Anna stifled an anticipatory giggle, her sister sighed, “You’ve grown into a spectacular young woman.”

Elsa’s arms slid their way over Anna’s shoulders, and for a moment she indulged in the portrait of them in the mirror. She pursed her lips and in a steady and trained form said, “Kristoff will be very proud to marry you.”

There was an absolute silence. Anna’s breath hitched as a cold weight lay itself upon her chest. She felt the tickling of hairs and soft caresses at the back of her neck, a familiar intimacy. With the slightest hesitation, as the gentle hands pulled themselves away, Anna opened her eyes. Around her neck was a string of soft green gemstones. She graced the ordainment with her hands, and remembered faintly an infantile infatuation with the texture. The deep-set stones held generations of admiration within them. It was their mother’s.

“Thank you, Elsa.” Anna looked at herself in the mirror, but instead saw the somber, unfinished shape of her life set out before her. She saw the children she would bear and mother for their kingdom, the sweet nostalgia that she would have for moments like this, the ambiguous shape of her love, wavering like a lost galleon’s sail. She could spend the rest of her life with the ice picker, but she thought of the piece of herself that would be lost to the void of indecision.

Elsa was struck by the sudden well of emotion that poured out of her sister. As Anna began to cry, Elsa fidgeted her gloved hands in front of her. She tried to conceal the disappointment in her voice as she fretted, “I’m sorry if you don’t like it. Is it too much? Because it’s Mother’s or…” Elsa drifted into silence as the suppressed gasps of her sister’s sadness filled the expanse of the chamber.

She closed the distance between them, overcoming her habitual isolation, and pulled her sister into a fostering embrace.

Withdrawing a ragged breath, Anna sobbed into the bosom of her sister, “As soon as I have you again, everything changes! It’s going to be so different! And- and,” Anna raised her face to Elsa, “I love you so much, Elsa, and I-I can’t be stuck on the other s-side of some stupid door!” Her lips were pursed, to withhold her whimpers and feign bravery; her eyes were tired and searching the solemn expression of her sister.

Elsa lightly drew her fingers across her sister’s cheek, wiping her tears away. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart.” She graced a soft kiss into the red hair before her, but Anna was caught with another bout of crying.

“I’m not going anywhere,” a placating kiss on the forehead.

“I could never leave you,” a kiss on Anna’s salty cheeks.

“I,” Elsa placed a hand under Anna’s chin, and brought her fragile gaze to meet the steady and vulnerable visage of a worn queen, “I don’t ever want you to feel that loneliness again.”

In an impulse, Elsa leaned down and planted a brief and loving kiss onto Anna’s lips. It was methodical and gentle, but conveyed all of Elsa’s boundless devotion. When she pulled away, she was shaking with flushed cheeks and a tightened jawline. Anna neither responded nor rejected her, and so a turbulent silence hung itself in the room.

\--

“How could you do this to me!” Anna raged, “You said that we would stop! After the engagement! After nearly being-” She clenched her fists and whipped her head around to glare at the guilty form of her sister on the bed sheets. Anna lowered her voice to a shrill whisper, “After nearly being ousted! Do you want the entire Kingdom to know about this-” she drew an index finger between them, “this incestuous fucking disaster between us!”

Elsa pulled the comforter tighter around herself, but never took her eyes off of her sister. Elation and guilt brewed a tasteless bile in her stomach.

“We made a promise, Elsa. You promised me that this was over,” Anna demanded something from her sister, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear.

“I promised you?” Elsa strengthened her resolve, the stomach-churning brew turning to venom, “Hah! As if you’re some passive participant in all of this! Take some god forsaken accountability, Anna!”

Anna’s next words trapped themselves in her mouth, her fierce glare following her sister’s refined gestures.

“I should not be the one making promises! Do you have any idea how much this hurts me? Your whole fantastic delusion of a marriage has hurt me, Anna! Now you want me to take responsibility for your self-inflicted, pathetic mistakes?” Elsa began to sternly and roughly put her black velvet tunic back on, “You did this to yourself as much as I did. I’m not some pack animal that you can simply unload the burden of your life on and then expect me to carry it around while you fuck and marry as you please! You can’t use my love like that!”

A cynical layer of ice had consumed most of the room, but Anna only regarded the worn woman before her. “Well. You can’t use your love to imprison me,” Anna sneered with vile contempt, “We’re not a thing, Elsa.”

The Queen had finished redressing herself. She straightened her back and withdrew into the vacant and powerful façade of matriarchy. She took four slow strides towards her sister and seized the air of the argument, “You are the only person I have ever loved, Anna. Apparently you and I have that in common.”

Anna felt her stomach lurch as she watched this merciless effigy of her love leave the room.

She did nothing to stop her. She had been thoroughly eviscerated by the perfect, penetrating volley of insults. They knew each other’s weaknesses well, but where Anna was passionate and recklessly vile, her sister was astute and violently capable of piercing the heart of a matter. If they had been brothers, Elsa would have pinned her to the ground until she called ‘mercy,’ but they were not. And so instead Elsa had laid bare the entirety of Anna’s flaws, and left her to the mercy of her own pure, unadulterated vulnerability.

\---

The Princess of Arendell stood alone in the cold room; her only company was the crumpled form of her wedding dress and her own pale, scantly clad reflection bearing disappointed glances at her. She began absently pulling at her messy braids, and collecting her things from around the bed. As she was pinning her hair back into a crippled imitation of a bun, she heard a gentle knock on the door. Anna held her breath as the heart in her chest tried to claw its way out.

“Princess Anna,” she heard an old, tired voice reach out, “Are you in there?”

Relief washed over Anna. “Yes!” She fretted and held the white dress in front of herself as she cracked open the door, “Y-yes, Greta?”

The frail maid examined the daughter of her late friends with wise eyes. “I wanted to see if you were ready for your rehearsal dinner,” Gerda sighed, seeing the ice that had crawled into the doorway, “But I should see if you are alright. Pardon my intrusion, but did you and Her Majesty have an… altercation?”

Tears welled up in Anna’s eyes, and she ushered her nursemaid into the bedchamber, “I’ve made a really big mistake, Gerda.” Anna flattened out a portion of the sheets for her guest to sit on.

When Gerda sat, the Princess slowly looked back and forth between the poignant symbolism of the fabric in her arms and the patient stare of her guest. Anna opened her mouth, but the words she wanted to speak instead sank into the pit of her stomach and created a wordless whimper. “I’m so selfish. I’m so selfish,” she repeated in a cycle that decayed into sobbing.

Gerda invited the girl into a tender embrace. They sat together as Anna sobbed into her caretaker’s lap.

Anna suddenly felt very young again, and she was flooded with memories of her older sister sharing her life with her. She remembered the silhouetted form of her sister standing over her in some long-gone teenage summer, conjuring snow and ice in the warm air. Elsa looked down at her, completely devoid of any remembrance of their late parents, smiling in the surreal, glacial sunshine. Anna had felt the first inkling of romantic love for her sister in that moment. She remembered the pure and vast depression that had haunted Elsa the year before. The two young women had looked constantly exhausted, and their long, lonesome nights crawled through their eyes. Their grief was an abyss that crumbled the earth right behind their heels, so they fell fervently into one another the next summer.

In that moment, Anna developed an obsessive craving for the joy that she had seen in her sister. She spent years chasing after echoes of that same moment, and it had consumed so much of Anna’s efforts to little avail. She never saw any equivalent reflection of life in her sister. The only comparative moment was when they had kissed briefly before Elsa’s coronation in the chromatic light of the stained glass windows. Anna saw relief and exhilaration wash over her sister before they were interrupted, and the regal iron doors of Duty were wrought between them.

“Gerda, I’m in love,” Anna sighed in a mournful whisp.

“I know you are, sweetie.” Gerda hesitated, but said with careful consideration, “I’m… glad you know that you’re in love before your wedding day.”

“It’s not…” Anna raised her eyes to Gerda, and felt a sense of knowing from her, “It’s not Kristoff. I mean, he’s wonderful and I love him, but I’m in love with…” She stopped, the words halting themselves.

Gerda stood, pulling the dejected form of Anna up with her. Anna’s head was swimming. She was shaking as she wretched the words like hooks from her heart.

“I’m in love with Elsa.”

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, this is literally my first fanfiction since 2007. Title is that of another over dramatic Swedish sister-adjacent lesbian movie-- also known as Kiss Mig. Don't @ me, teens. It's a genre.


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